8 October 2011

We said goodbye to the trout season on Thursday, my last trip was the previous Thursday and i failed to get out again because of the lousy weather. But the season never truly finishes. A magnificent creature known as the lady of the stream keeps us going through the winter , yes it's grayling time ,until that time when the trout once again become fair game mid in March, an introduced species of which i'm glad of there prescence .

well there has not been many gaps in the rain but yesterday was dry , through the night we only had lightish rain, so i thought I'd chance it.The water looked OK, it was brownish , but it always is. a little bit higher though than i like it. some of the deeper pools which can be great were just to coloured to fish well the pools less than a foot deep however seemed to fish OK.
in my first pool of that description like that i hooked and lost a fish definitely a grayling too. in the same pool i then dropped one on a nymph. never mind plenty more water.
A wee rise in the next pool, and i had a Parr, i was concentrating on the head when at the side i saw a rise. Turned out to be a grayling , got it on a CDC and elk. i netted it then put my net down, unfortunately i forgot my lanyard , it was on my rucksack at home , i remembered to grab the magnet but forgot that side, so i was using a bit of nylon , mistake i just about lost my net so i scoured the bottom, in panic getting a wet arm in the process, i eventually found it. phew.that could have been a pricey mistake, McLean weigh nets ain't cheap at £60 . Anyway heres the first grayling of the day looks like something had a go at it's tail.

continued upstream and it was a usual story though i did come across the odd dimple riser, which i used a smaller single fly caught a few tiny wee grayling ,nice to see for the future.

generally i was using NZ style, then it hit me NZ style for me anyway isn't the way to go for grayling, a much better , method is a short dropper, it hit me of course when i rose a better fish. Trout today were not a problem avoiding though i did have a few. Next time I'll be better organised, and learn from the routine mistakes i made today, hopefully the next time the water will be clearer and lower it will bring a lot more water into play.